


The Shipping Charts All End In Broken Hearts

by chronologicalimplosion



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F, F/M, Homestuck Shipping Olympics, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-21
Updated: 2012-06-21
Packaged: 2017-11-08 05:56:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/439895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chronologicalimplosion/pseuds/chronologicalimplosion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your name is Roxy Lalonde, you are the 1337est hacker that ever used the retro phrase '1337' unironically, your mother is a famous writer, and you have basically three friends.</p>
<p>Oh, also, you appear to be the protagonist of a dating sim. You're not so good at the dating part, if said dates are supposed to involve you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Shipping Charts All End In Broken Hearts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [majyyk (Oripoke)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oripoke/gifts).



> Man, this was annoying to tag. Ugh.
> 
> Written for the [HSO Bonus Round One](http://hs-olympics.dreamwidth.org/13513.html) (which is all about genre-mashing) [Prompt](http://hs-olympics.dreamwidth.org/13513.html?thread=2126281#cmt2126281):
> 
> Dating Sim plus Twenty Minutes into the Future for Jane<3Jake<3Roxy<3Dirk?
> 
> I have a lot I want to say about this that no one wants to hear, about how long this took and the logistics and how I'm really happy with it, but... I guess I'll save y'all the details. It's long enough as it is (long enough that Dreamwidth simply wouldn't let me post it as a comment). Enjoy.
> 
> ((Additional muck about images that you can skip if you're not visually impaired and have a relatively reliable internet connection and browser:
> 
> If, for whatever reason, you can't see the images (which makes me sad because it took me ages to hand-letter them), they're gifs of the choice selection boxes that make dating sims dating sims. They're animated, but it's just the arrow blinking on and off, and I tried to orchestrate it so that if they glitched and you just see a still you should still see the arrow, but it's always hard to predict how they'll break. All of the options and which one is selected with the arrow are (hopefully) outlined in the alt text.))

Your name is Roxy Lalonde, you are the 1337est hacker that ever used the retro phrase '1337' unironically, your mother is a famous writer, and you have basically three friends. One of them is an internet friend you've never met who seems convinced that she's the ugliest thing that has ever graced the face of the planets even though she's the most precious sweetheart that you ever did meet, and the other two are both--bless their hearts--completely and utterly helpless without you. Their shared object of affection, one very phonily British Jake English (actually raised by his billionaire eccentric grandmother on the surface of the moon) can be counted your fourth friend on better days, but your relationship consists very heavily of you getting frustrated at him because it would hurt your image to be frustrated at your real bffsies, along with a fair share of him being endearingly clueless and actually needing your genuine help a lot more than your other friends do. Which is obviously not how actual, real, quantifiable friendships work. (In a lot of ways, he's your opposite and probably your truest friend.)

You go to a very exorbitantly expensive private school with the aforementioned three doofuses; Jake English, Jane Crocker, and Dirk Strider; and a good deal of other less bearable morons. You are Sort Of A Big Deal, even in a school comprised of people who are Mostly Sort Of Big Deals, partly due to your mother's fame, partly due to your shining personality, and partly due to the fact that you host (in)famous parties at your mother's large mansion, where she doesn't care what you do and leaves the liquor cabinet unlocked.

You also sort of have a drinking problem.

_Loading..._

"Good Afternoon, Roxy! How are you this fine day?" Jane's smile is made up almost entirely of innocence and sincerity, partly because of her demeanor and partly because of her impressively bucked teeth. It can be like a second sun on mornings where you're fighting hangovers, but today you are actually quite happy to see it.

"Janey-pie! I thought for sure you'd be out chasing Jake's fine ass. What brings you to my corner of the woods?" Your corner of the woods varies from day to day, but on this particular Saturday, with no party planned, it's on the bed of your dorm room, fully ensconced in your gaming. This afternoon was a Mario Kart afternoon, but with Jane's appearance you simply drop out of the race and remove your headset. The gloves stay on your hands, as you're actually quite fond of the way the articulation feels when the skeleton of sensors moves with your hands.

"I... was actually hoping to get your advice about that." She looks so awkward just standing there, shuffling her feet and looking everywhere but at you, like you would actually kick her out or something. You motion for her to sit down on the bed beside you.

"Sweetie, you have come to the right place, because Mama Lalonde is the BEST of advice-givers, especially when it comes to romance."

"I know... I know that he talks to you quite a lot. Has he said anything... about me?" She's understandably skittish about the whole thing, and you open your mouth to cut her off but she keeps talking before you can. "This whole thing makes me terribly nervous. What if I make a fool of myself? What if he doesn't think of me the same way?"

You are, of course, the premier source of romantic advice for all of your friends. Roxy Lalonde, Love Guru. The reader, mender, and bringer-togetherer of hearts the world over. And, of course, you spend a lot of your time fielding romantic questions regarding Jake.

There are a lot of complications with helping Jane chase his fake-English ass. One of them is that you're pretty sure you're actually a little bit in love with her yourself. But you haven't let that get in the way of your romantic advice-giving before, and it certainly won't stop you now. No, that's not the problem. The biggest problem, the one in play right now, is that Jake does indeed "like her back", in the most trite of middle school twists that still happen in high school, and that he comes to you for romantic advice as well. You offer complete confidence to both of them (your mother, amongst her many talents, is also a psychiatrist, and as such you are fully aware of Doctor-Patient confidentiality), and while, ideally, you would just be able to get one or both of them to make a move, they are both incredibly shy dunderfucks. Jake is also incredibly obtuse and Jane is incredibly wary.

And then they come to you with questions like this that they _know_ you can't answer, and you always have a decision to make.

Except not really. Because you can't just go around breaking confidences. What kind of advice-giver would you be then?

"C'mon, let's play something easy and you can tell Mama Roxy about your woes. You know you don't want me spilling all of your wild fantasies to Jake, so I ain't gonna pass anything he's told me along to you, regardless of what it's about."

She's not exactly happy about it, but Jane does consent to play a mindless fighting game while you have a girltalk. As you're setting your ∞Gamr to relay to the large screen in your room instead of your usual head-mounted display, you throw in the obligatory "You could ask him yourself, y'know. He's under no such oath."

If you were anyone else, anyone at all, you would have been able to dodge the pillow thrown at your head, as Jane is notoriously bad at aiming. But you're Roxy Lalonde, notorious drunk who is even more notoriously bad at ducking out of the way.

_Loading..._

You slide into your normal seat next to Dirk in study hall. The pair of you are basically childhood friends gone wrong, a pair of genius freaks with weird and strangely complimentary hobbies. The last time either of you did actual homework in study hall was long before you hacked into the system and ensured that you got it in the same room the same period with a teacher who would just sleep while you systematically took apart and then improved every piece of electronics you could get your hands on. Including, occasionally, specimens that belonged to the school more than they belonged to either of you.

"'Sup, Rox?"

"I dunno, DiStri, do you by any chance have anything planned? Because mosta what I got are sorta childish pranks."

"Nothing wrong with those."

"Nope, but I have a feeling you have a better idea."

"I've got another robotics project in mind, actually." He's already pulling the parts out, and you're excited, but it's Dirk, and he is ALL ABOUT THE IRONY. You can't do things straight up with him because you can be One Mysterious Babe yourself.

"Do you really need another mechanized butler?"

He looks at you with that same look he always gives, only it's a little more amused, a little more content, with a friend that he likes and a casual challenge. Not many people notice the little differences, you think. Sometimes you wonder if even Jane and Jake aren't capable of it.

"Really, Roxy, have you ever seen me make a robot butle?"

"I know you clean up just for me. You probably put all of the robutlers in the closet or put them in weird hats and make pretend they're rapbots or whatever. Why else can none of them rap?"

"If they're bad at rapping, Miss Elite Hacker, it's because you programmed them that way."

"Woah, woah, _WOAH_. Are you insulting my hacking skills?"

"No. I might, however, be making a passive-aggressive sleight at your rapping skills."

"What? Nonsense! RoLal is totes the best crapper you ever will find."

"'Crapper'?" That gets him to stop unpacking, and you smile at him, the smile with all your teeth that everyone thinks you only make when you're drunk. To be honest, you've only had a sip or two today, and you know that everyone in the room aside from you, Dirksie, and the snoozing teacher are wondering just how you can manage to get so drunk so quickly when you're not even drinking anything.

The rest of the class is paying an undue amount of attention to the pair of you, but you're used to it. It's been a while since anyone else in your room has done any actual homework during study hall, either.

"It stands for Caucasian Rapper, obviously! This skin look black to you?"

"I will never understand your obsessive love for such antiquated terms. Now are you going to let me explain what I want to do or not?"

This is approximately where things start to go downhill. You are not _nearly_ drunk enough to think that you're a good rapper, but hell if you're about to back down from a challenge that you mostly brought down upon yourself.

_M'name is Rolal, and boys, don't you forget it.  
I can code, I can rap, and I bring life to Sti's wickets.  
The mother of many a robot and many an AI,  
this retro gamer girl is  
way  
past  
fly.  
I'll drink ya under the table,  
I'll drink ya to the floor,  
But y'know I'm just so lovely  
You'll always come back wanting more.  
_

The words are, actually, not horrible, and you avoided rhyming it with it (even though you had to obliquely reference a children's book your mother was sarcastically fond of to do it), a sticky situation which you didn't think about while you were getting yourself into, but your rhythm is not nearly as impressive as it is in your head, and you're starting to run out of meaningless nonsense to say.

Dirk can see it on your face, thankfully, and takes over from there.

You admire the gorgeous, regular cadence of his words, quick and sly and with a pervasive dry humor that no one else will ever master quite like he has. You also admire the lines of his body, so long as you're admiring. This is his public persona, putting it on for the crowd far more than for you, just distracting them until they forget how the little debacle began, and he's dumbing his lyrics down a little so that they understand most of the jokes. The confidence that straightens his spine and relaxes his shoulders, the exact casualty there, there's nothing like it.

It basically goes without saying that you are probably more in love with Dirk than you are with Jane, but this is also coming from you in a moment when you're watching Dirk in his natural habitat as opposed to Jane in hers. When she really gets it in her mind to figure something out, when she catches onto a mystery or just generally sets her heart to something, she's pretty magnificent herself. And, in her own way, Jane can be just as cluelessly, adorably endearing as Jake.

_Loading..._

You totally don't have an eensy weensy crush on Jake, because that would be totally and completely improper. Not only is he one of your many patients as the Love Doctor (a relationship which, to you, is not necessarily completely mutually exclusive from crush-dom, even though it probably should be), but he is the one that all of your other patients are crushing _on_.

You don't have a crush on him. Not at all. The same way he's not actually your friend. (Publically.)

You don't usually seek him out like you do with Jane or Dirk because, again, you don't like him and he's not your friend. But he finds you plenty often enough to make up for it. (What can you say? Jake's a friendly guy.)

Like today, when you're trying to enjoy a martini in peace and he, somehow, has wheedled out your super secret hiding spot yet again.

(You don't mind as much as if it were Dirk or Jane that found you, because he doesn't mind it when you drink.)

"Oh! Hello, Roxy. I wasn't expecting to find you here!"

"Well, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't expecting to see you. I know the routine by now. Do you seriously just walk around the school until you find me?" You sigh with your pause as opposed to your breath, and you move aside to make room for him. Unlike Jane, he will settle down and make himself comfortable without hesitation.

"Not you particularly. I just set out in my free time and look for adventure. You always happen to find the snazziest little alcoves, and I have a nose for clever hiding spots, if I do say so myself." He does, in fact, sit down beside you, smiling with the most completely clueless grin on his face that has ever been smiled since the dawn of all the worlds.

You feel so old and soiled and lecherous, sitting next to him, thinking bitter thoughts and drinking an exceptionally dry drink all alone. You think about setting said drink aside, but in the end you just wind up taking another long sip of it.

"Far be it from me to argue. More of a listener anywho."

There is only a short bit of silence, because the both of you know he is going to give in and talk to you, in the end. "I think... I'm starting to think about grabbing the bull by the horns and asking Jane out. I'm sick of being so unsure about this, and it would very much be the movie hero thing to do."

"Well, it depends on what movie we're talking about, but I'm glad to hear one of our quartet is finally growing a pair."

"I don't think that's entirely fair to our friends. They've both accomplished an awful lot of very impressive things. Jane is already doing a lot to manage her corporate empire, and Dirk has completely forged his own life for himself. And I don't think I even have to tell you about all of the great things you've done."

Roxy smiled a little, pouring herself another glass of alcohol. "A girl could use some reminding sometimes, I think. But I meant when it comes to relationships and pants-wearing. You're not the romance coach for all of our sorry asses."

"What is that I hear? Is Miss Lalonde breaking her oath of silence to make cryptic allusions to the mysterious love lives of our mutual friends?"

"Nope, of course not. I am Ms. Zuipperpips, remember?" You wink at him over the rim of your glass, and Jake's laugh makes your heart do funny things.

Why can't you be like all of your friends and have just one crush that you're not willing to do anything about?

_Loading..._

The Big Dance is coming up. It's like Prom, only in the winter and not at the end of the year, because that's obviously when Prom happens, not when winter happens.

You have no plans to ask anyone, but all of your friends have rather conflicting plans and something is going to have to give. You've been dreading this day for a while now, the day when your friends will have to work things out for themselves, when your meddling will have to come to an end because you _can't pick which of your friends will be happy and be-Jaked and which one will be lonely and sad and bitter and depressed._

...Or can you?

Everyone's going to come to you for advice anyway. What do you do?

At some point, as Master Romance Genius Woman, you have to step back and let your pupil-patient-friends do their own thing.

They come to you, seeking advice, but you must turn them away one by one until you are left a drunken heap on the floor of your mother's mansion (you don't want to be tempted by your proximity to the events, nor do you really want any of them coming back for last-second advice or help or meddling), idly writing typo-ridden lines of code as you wait for your friends to inevitably bring you news via pesterchum.

When you finally hear back from them, you can't imagine things having possibly gone more wrong. Dirk and Jane, obviously, planned their asking for the same night, and wound up both going to Jake's dorm while he was out looking for Jane to ask her. Dirk had an entourage of rapping robots and an armful of exotic flowers, while Jane had a multilayer cake (his favorite flavor of fudge swirl iced his favorite color of green, as Jane had ensured) with the inquiry "Dance?" and likenesses of the pair lovingly hand-piped across it. It wasn't exactly like they could hide their intentions.

They got into a fight, and through some convoluted series of events, Dirk wound up finding Jake first, and Jake was asking for Jane but Dirk asked if he'd be his date anyway, and there was confusion and sputtering and honesty and, in the end, everyone was completely confused and unsatisfied and it was an awful, awful mess.

Wait. No. What the hell? Reset. This isn't how things are supposed to go.

_Loading..._

Everyone's going to come to you for advice anyway. What do you do?

It's really quite easy, pulling the strings so that Jane gives up. You hint to Jane that asking Jake might not be the best idea, a horrible lump in your throat all the while, and it sends her into enough of a second-guessing flurry to act as a sufficient monkey wrench.

You nudge Dirk in the right direction, away from his showiest plans and more towards sincerity and romance, the kind of thing Jake would go for.

The hardest part is Jake himself, because when you ask if he has any... more-than-friendly thoughts towards Dirk, completely out of the blue, his response is "Oh. Drat. Have I been that obvious?"

No. No, as a matter of fact, you fucking haven't.

He takes your silence as the confirmation it sure as hell isn't, going on to explain that he isn't sure he's content with just being Dirk's friend, and that he has entertained other thoughts, but that he always felt Jane was a much simpler, much more accessible, much more long-term partner. That she was the one he would've ridden off into the sunset with in a movie. He could stand to be just friends with Dirk, but it was much harder for him to think of Jane that way.

And now he isn't sure and isn't going to ask her because "It really wouldn't be fair, if it's common knowledge that I'm pining after another. It wouldn't be fair even if it wasn't, were I being honest with myself."

He tells Dirk that he's very, very sorry, and that he wishes he could go with a clean conscience, but he can't, and they don't go to the dance.

Jane, meanwhile, is feeling broken-hearted and betrayed and she's a little mad at you because she catches wind of the Dirk/Jake incident and puts the pieces together in something a little too close to the truth.

She hates you and she has every right to, and absolutely nothing good came out of any of the sabotage.

No. Wait. This blows too. Reset. Try again. There has to be a way.

_Loading..._

Everyone's going to come to you for advice anyway. What do you do?

It's not a very simple thing to do, dissuading Dirk once he has his mind set on something, and he can always see through you far better than Jake or Jane can. So instead of trying to talk him out of asking Jake out, instead of confronting him and giving him reasons to hate you or whatever else, you go talk to Jane. Just Jane.

She's the one that really needs your help, anyway. Competing with a Strider in matters of the heart... she's outgunned. Really. You're just taking pity on the underdog; evening the playing field.

No selfish agendas here, no siree.

"Janey? You here?" Your words cover up the knocking, because it's urgent and you're nervous and she didn't call back at you right away like she usually does. "Or are you gonna make me trek all the way to the batterwitch's domain and fight my way through your underlings to see you?"

Jane opens the door, leaving your hand in mid-knock, and she's giving you the slightly chastising look that quite clearly means "stop making fun of my company, Roxy; friends _do_ have boundaries."

"Janey, I have something serious to talk to you about."

"Roxy, how drunk are you?" It's a question she asks you often, ostensibly just judgmental but also honestly quite worried, and you really don't want to be asked now of all times.

"Not nearly drunk enough. Seriously, I _need_ to talk to you."

She sighs and purses her lips, but she lets you in and you follow her to the kitchen where she's baking.

You watch her for just a few minutes in silence before you ask, bluntly, the inevitable question. "Is this the cake for Jakey?"

She's suddenly shy, blushing and ducking her head and her hands stopping from their busy work. "Well... not exactly. This is sort of a dry run. I want to make sure I get all of the details exactly right, especially since I haven't ever tried this recipe before..."

You grab her shoulders and make her look at you, more manic than you can explain while still sounding like a sane person, and she sees it in your eyes, the reason why you showed up drunk. "Look, Janey, you're the most brilliant cook I have ever met. You can bake one damn fine cake, and I'm sure this one'll be no different. You have to ask Jake today, not tomorrow, and I'm sorry but you're just going to have to trust me on this one. Because he's not going to say no, not if you go today."

The impossible star burst of hope lights her eyes up like Christmas before she manages to tamp it down, the mask of skepticism firmly back in place. She doesn't believe you, even though she wants to, because there's no evidence, and there's nothing you can give her but you just want her and Jake to be happy and maybe you're a little too drunk to make good choices but _dammit at least some of your friends deserve the innocent kind of happiness._

"I wouldn't lie to you. I know that's hard for you to accept, but I'm your friend, and I'm not going to lead you astray. Not on this. I swear."

And she looks at you with her innocent-but-knowledgeable eyes, and they're wide and more innocent than knowledgeable, soft and sweet and _believing you_. For once. That's new.

After it's all said and done, Jake and Jane have a happy date to the dance, and you and Dirk are sitting on the roof of the guys' dorms, as lonely a pair of creatures as the universe ever did see.

"I'm happy for them," he says, finally, after you've been sitting beside him for nearly an hour, with not a word exchanged. And you're sure he is, but at the same time, he is silently broken, dismayed, because he didn't even get his chance and he can't butt in now.

"I'm sorry."

"It was probably bound to happen all along. They've got a lot they can learn from each other. They'll probably make a better pair than Jake and I ever would."

The self-deprecating edge to his voice kills you. It kills you because of how familiar it is, and how very much you've finally turned him into you, into the unloved soul who has to stand back and be happy for the ones he loves finding love with each other.

"Dirk, no. You're the best damn specimen of the male race that ever did exist, and they're both fucking fools for not seeing that."

He doesn't say anything, and it's all your fault that his confidence is gone.

Reset. Reset. Reset. Dirk doesn't deserve loneliness any more than the rest of you. RESET.

_Loading..._

Everyone's going to come to you for advice anyway. What do you do?

No. No. NO! Fuck this. Fuck this whole fucking thing.

You are Roxy Lalonde, and game construct or no, you are one 1337 Haxxor grl, and you are not going to stand for this rubbish assortment of endings.

You go to work.

lksj.dg......  
as...........sg,,.s.---sldkg

lkjsglksdf  
slkj

 

sgnlaskdfjw9gn...qn32ih

lkg  
qhq  
algkj--sdg- Dirk and Jane, chests heaving and throats raw from the screaming match they've just had, both fall down to sit and commiserate.

Dirk has all but crushed the flowers in his fist and Jane's careful piping got a little smudged, which means, being that Jane is the perfectionist she is, that it will never again see the light of day.

The bots are in the background, forlorn.

Their commiserating is interspersed with talking about the things they love about Jake, which quickly gives way to trying to cheer each other up, standing up for each other, being the unshakeable friends they always were.

They're laughing by the end of it, having nearly forgotten their woes, and it's just so great to be together and...

sdlgkjas

they...s--ag..sg 

Kiss.agjoigh2lka.gn lann.tho2  
.hlkj88ljasg  
alskgj  
a  
a  
asgl  
4t...--agj3--aRoxyagkl////ghh3Jake  
alkjha88882Jane'wlj  
..20a0Dirk.230===+--j  
lkjtkiss.a,ghug,.lolka  
"I love you>'  
a.g

_Loading..._

Your name is Roxy Lalonde, and you have three really great prom dates. And, as the icing on the cake, said really great prom dates don't just have you, they also all have each other. You are possibly the first orgy prom date that went to a dance that wasn't actually quite prom.

Or maybe you aren't.

But it doesn't matter, because you all love each other and it's the first setup that's made everyone happy. Which is really quite important to everyone.


End file.
